Again and Again

I read a friend’s Facebook post today, and it really encouraged me. It was funny and lighthearted and honest and talked about how she was waiting for the future superhero version of herself to arrive. I wish I could share the actual post with you, but when I tried to go back to it I couldn't find it for the life of me!

Anyway, it was encouraging because perfectionism and idealistic expectations have been a long-time struggle for me.

Usually what most discourages me is just how long I’ve been fighting the same battle. I get disappointed when I make progress and then fall back down again. And again. And again. I feel frustrated there’s no formula or shortcut. It’s hard to keep finding grace for myself.

Yet it’s moments like these—a quick look at a friend’s post on Facebook—that remind me I’m not alone and help me get up again. In the middle of a newsfeed of picturesque moments and ads targeting my desire for “better, more, and easier,” I find hidden treasures in people sharing the everyday parts of their lives and their hearts.

Much of life is like this. In person or virtually, we are bombarded by ads and messages reinforcing negative beliefs we have about ourselves and others. It can be a little overwhelming sometimes. Yet in the midst of it all, we also encounter the honesty of friends, the kindness of strangers, the joy of walking alongside people who are just as messy and messed up as we are—whatever it is we need to give us the courage and strength to rise after a faceplant. We all need this encouragement sometimes. We’re all waiting for the superhero version of ourselves to come—not one of us has found her yet!

When we practice authenticity and let our walls down, we not only experience freedom in our falling and rising, but we also find the strength to get back up. It's found in and fueled by compassion and empathy and community. We all need it. Today, tomorrow, the next day, the one after that and the one after that. We fall down and we get up. Sometimes our getting up is what gives someone else the courage to rise, and sometimes watching someone else get up for the millionth time is what gives us the extra nudge we need to try to stand on our wobbly legs again.

Again, and again, and again, and again.

I’ve written about this theme before, and here I write about it once more—because I needed that extra nudge again today, and maybe you do, too.

Here’s to getting up, to falling, and to getting up again. (And again. And again.)

Are there areas in life in which you feel like you're constantly falling and having to get back up?

What motivates you to get back up when you've fallen?

How can we be more intentional about helping each other back up?

Come and See

I have an ant problem in my room. I noticed them weeks ago, crawling around my room and sometimes on my mattress, but they never bit so I dismissed them after flinging them mercilessly off my bed. However, when I returned from a short expedition to Vietnam, I discovered the ants had begun making an ant pile near the base of one of the legs of my bed. Which meant…there were many, many ants on my bed. I cleaned out the ant pile, washed my sheets, and found the source of the ants. They were coming through holes in the poorly-sealed grout between the tiles on my wall. 

If I had wooden walls, they would literally be coming out of the woodwork. As it is, they were actually coming out of the tilework. And they had started to bite! It was war.

After trying several different battle tactics (including spraying them with Lysol and insect repellant, attempting to seal the grout with glue (and failing), and googling how to make homemade grout so I could more effectively fill the holes), they still wouldn’t stop crawling around. I managed to keep them off my bed by spraying the base of my bed with lemon-eucalyptus insect repellant, but they continued coming out of the tilework day and night. They were driving me crazy. I won’t elaborate on the paranoia I developed except to comment that I one night I had a dream a giant ant attacked me. Finally, though, it dawned on me that I had tape. I could tape over the ants’ entry points and keep them from congregating around my bed. (No matter that they can come in through the half-centimeter gap under my door. My door is far away enough from my bed.) Who needs to make homemade grout when they have tape?

Thus far, it’s working! Granted, at the time I’m writing this it’s only been about thirty minutes since I taped over the grout in my tile (with black electrical tape because that’s all I have), but I have high hopes for this plan. I watched one ant coming back to the holes in the grout, looking for the way back home, passing the tape confusedly, and then scurrying around in a panic-like state before heading back to wherever he came from. You know how ants crawl in a line? How they travel to a place and return using the exact same route? Well another ant was coming up that same route but hadn’t yet discovered the way home had been sealed, and I always imagine the ants talk to each other when they bump into one another going opposite ways. They bumped into each other, and the panicking ant waved his little antenna around like crazy, and the other ant paused for a millisecond before continuing hesitantly on his route. This is how I imagine their conversation went:

“Dude!! Dude!! I can’t find the hole to go home! It’s gone! Something happened! Something terrible is going on! You can’t go back that way! You can’t!!!”

“Really?!”

“Yes!!! What are we going to do?! You can’t go that way! Help me find a new way!”

“Oh. Thank you for the information. I’ll go see for myself.”

And then the ants continued on their way. What I like about ants (and I like very few things about ants, and I only like this trait sometimes) is that even if they bump into another ant that has updated news, they never listen. Over the past several days I’ve had plenty of ant observation time, and it’s true: I don’t know what kind of communication ants have, but they never take another ant’s word for it. They must see for themselves.

It reminds me of a woman in the Bible who told her friends about Jesus, and they went to see for themselves. It happened in a town near Jacob’s well in Samaria.

In the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, the woman’s friends heard the woman’s testimony and came to see Jesus for themselves. Eventually they told the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know this is indeed the Savior of the world” (John 4:42).

Sometimes, it’s a good thing to be like those stubborn little ants. When we hear something so strange and radical it’s nearly unbelievable, we must go and find out for ourselves.

“Come and you will see.” That’s what Jesus told two men who asked where he was staying, and they did. They followed him and saw for themselves. And they ended up being two of the twelve disciples (John 1:39).

The Psalmist wrote: “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). It’s an invitation.

Come and see for yourself. I can tell you all the stories in the world about the Lord and what He is doing in the nations, about missions and the international church and how life-changing living with faithful Christians of a different culture can be. I can tell you how rewarding it is, how difficult it is, how it helps me see Jesus more clearly, but sometimes that doesn’t do it justice.

You must come and see for yourself.

So here is the invitation, friend! Come and see. Come to the nations and see what God is doing. Come to a cross-cultural setting and experience the joy and the wonder of learning about God from a completely new perspective. Come begin friendships with those who are not like you and see the beauty of diversity.

Come to Cambodia, or come to Mexico, or come to China town in your city, or come to an international students’ gathering. Come to a church service in a different language, or come to an apartment complex housing refugees. Come to a lifestyle built around Jesus. The Lord called us to make disciples of all nations, and the adventure and joy of following His call—that’s something you can only truly experience for yourself.

Don't take my word for it! Come and see for yourself.

(If you want, you can come see the tape on the tiles in my room for yourself!)

When the Words Won't Come

It’s been a little while since I've been able to write a complete post. It’s not that I haven't been trying. The words just won't come. I’ve started writing on half a dozen topics in the past couple weeks, only to minimize the documents on my screen and eventually click out of them one by one, as my passion or conviction or interest fades away and the words stop coming.

This is, I suppose, writer’s block.

A few months ago I was trying to decide if I should jump into an online writing course by author and writing coach Ally Fallon. I don’t usually buy into online courses, much less purely-for-pleasure online courses, but Ally won me over.

You see, Allison used to offer an online course but permanently closed it long before I picked up writing again. Several months ago, I entered my contact info on the "just in case I ever re-open the course" page on her website, and when Ally decided to offer the course again last November, she sent personal emails to everyone who had indicated interest. She asked if I had any questions and invited me to enroll.

I was on the fence about spending money on a writing course (especially since I was about to quit my job), so I asked if the course would help with writer’s block. That was my biggest challenge. As promised, Ally emailed me back the next day. Her response was intriguing. She said, “I say that sometimes ‘writer’s block’ is more likely ‘life block’ and what we really need is to find clarity and direction.”

“Sometimes ‘writer’s block’ is more likely ‘life block’”
    -Allison Fallon

Her insight was spot on and a brand new idea to me. During the months preceding that exchange, I had waves of creativity and seasons of absolutely nothing. When I looked at the whirlwind of lessons I was learning in life during that same time period, I noticed the waves of creativity often came at the tail end of personal breakthroughs. She was right.

Right now, I’m once again in a place where the words just aren’t coming the way I would like. They come in sporadic, short-lived spurts to tease me before dissolving like marshmallows in hot chocolate. They float on top in easy access when I start sipping, but before I'm halfway finished they’ve completely disappeared and can’t be recovered.

However, this time around my perspective has changed (not on putting ‘mallows in my hot chocolate. On writer’s block.).

First, I have a little more grace on myself. Right now it’s not just writer’s block I’m up against; it’s life block. Living life is a big task, after all, and we all need time to figure it out. Though it’s possible to struggle with writer’s block alone and not life block, I find nine times out of ten they occur together. (I use writing as an example, but really the same applies to any creative endeavor.)

Second, I shift from focusing on decreased productivity to focusing on what’s going on inside of me. Sometimes decreased productivity—in writing, teaching, and other parts of life—is a reflection of decreased mental, spiritual, and emotional health. When I’m not feeding my soul, my creative energy also wanes. (This, I believe, signifies something about the connection between the Creator and and our ability to create.) When I get too caught up in churning out enough quantity or quality, I miss the root cause of the creativity famine. I miss the life block.

Though it’s tempting to file this chapter of my life away along with my unfinished blog posts, instead I want to hit pause and look around in this moment in life. This in-between, stuck-and-don’t-know-how-to-get-out, feel-like-a-stalled-vehicle moment.

When I stop in this moment, I notice how impatient I am. I’d rather arrive at the revelation or epiphany marking the end of life block and writer’s block and any other kind of block and move on with life. I’ve tried everything: talking about it, reading books about getting unstuck, reading books completely unrelated to distract myself, texting friends about it, and praying about it. Yet try as I might, I cannot force it. Breakthrough simply cannot be forced.

Whether we like it or not, we all spend some portion of our lives in this place of in-between and waiting for breakthrough. Maybe not a huge portion (though currently it feels like it to me), and maybe not an exciting portion, but a portion nonetheless. And since this blog is all about writing about what our stories are really like, this seems to fit. It’s always nice to know someone else is (or has been) in the same spot we are, even if it’s a rather dull and irritating spot.

So this post is for all those who have waited for breakthrough. It’s for those who are still waiting patiently. It’s for those who are frustrated and worn out and are trying to force breakthrough. It’s for those who face life block at any time, for any amount of time. It's for all of us. When we  pause for a moment—just for a moment—and look around, we realize:

It’s okay to feel stuck. It happens to us all. 

Our souls and hearts and minds may need some extra care during this season.

We’re not alone. Plenty of people around us are at points in their journeys where they feel stuck. 

When we look around ourselves for a moment—just for a moment—we find a strange, unique sense of community with all those who share the experience of life block. We find a strange, unique sense of community with everyone. 

In this community, we can wait with each other and commiserate together and encourage one other. And when the life block—and writer’s block—finally ends…we can celebrate each breakthrough together.